increase ROI Archives by Mark Murnahan

What 40 Years Have Taught Me About Marketing

I turned forty today. I’m happy about it, too. It doesn’t really feel like forty quite yet, but I’ve done it! I have lived long enough to have some well-earned gray hair, and a good amount of wisdom that comes with it. For such a young guy, of course.

My forty years have come with a lot of lessons. Having spent well over half of those years as a marketing professional and business owner, I’ve learned a lot about marketing. I’ve shared large volumes of my experiences here on the Internet, and I feel great to say that I’ve helped a lot of people with that experience.

One of the things I learned about marketing is the value of brevity. Keep it short. Keep it easy. Don’t get too confusing with all of your wordiness. I learned it, and then I threw it out the window for the purpose of this blog. Brevity matters when you are selling something, but I am not. If you can embrace some blatant verbosity today, I’ll reward you with some valuable real life marketing lessons.

Did you get that? It’s my birthday, but I’m trying to give you a gift. I guess that’s lesson one. When you give more, you receive more, and it’s an important principle of marketing. It’s a principle that is far beyond most people’s patience threshold, but to the ones who get it, it is invaluable.

I’ve shared a lot of helpful principles and practices of marketing on this blog. Much of it comes directly from things I learned through decades in the marketing profession. I feel good about that, and I know I’ve made an impact. I’ve helped a lot of people reach their goals, both business and personal. I plan to continue that work, but in a different way.

The Announcement That Changed My Life: Sayonara Mediocrity

At forty years old, I decided it is time to change things up. I intended to be fully retired by now, and a few years ago, I was actually well-prepared for it. I had plans to race cars full time, and my work was going to focus only on things I love. My bank is not as big as it used to be after somebody screwed up the world’s economy, so I’m still working. That should not keep me from pursuing the work I love, so I’m doing it … I’m making one of those scary changes I’ve encouraged so many others to make.

As I announced a few weeks ago, I stopped taking new clients (of course, that is unless somebody with really big goals and a ginormous budget comes calling). It’s very liberating. Now I feel even more free than ever if I need to call somebody out for being an apathetic bonehead. I’m also inspired to believe that if I tell you something, you’ll feel confident there is not an underhanded agenda just to sucker you out of your hard-earned money.

A challenging fact of marketing is that the best marketing consultants will never receive as much benefit as the client. It’s why many independent marketing consultants have their own products or services to market, outside of the marketing industry. The best marketers know that marketing is an investment rather than wasted money, and that if they build their own business, they will always be paid far more than by boosting a client’s return on investment.

Sometimes clients will find themselves skeptical about who receives the greatest benefits, but it is the client and not the marketing consultant. I explained this in an article titled “Find Good SEO: Why Good SEO Don’t Seek Your Business“. Being regularly at odds with that inherent negativity and skepticism in the market is why I’m changing things up and creating some significant career moves. No, it’s not because I’m not good at it … I’m just ready to move on to something more positive and inspiring.

Today, more than ever, I hope you will listen up and take some good direction. Give this gritty old marketing guy a chance to help shape your perceptions and understanding of marketing. I serve some pretty good food for thought about marketing, and many easily actionable tasks that you can put to use in minutes. In fact, here are six ways to improve search engine ranking in under one hour. There’s one caveat: they are only useful if you use them.

I have no reason nor desire to lie to you or mislead you, and I cannot recall a time when I intentionally misled anybody about marketing. So slow down and stop worrying about the next thing to click.

Velocity is Great in a Market, But Sometimes You Must Slow Down

Rushing around the Internet looking for the next bit of marketing enlightenment is not where you really want to find yourself in another 15 minutes or half hour … or three months … or next year. That’s what everybody else is doing, and if you think searching the web and looking for the next bottle to rub and hoping a genie will pop out is a better option, you’re likely to get pretty average results.

Settle down and look for the greater benefits. A mathematical fact of the online marketing space is that an average result is abysmal. It’s true! Most companies really stink at reaching an online market, and never get much out of it. I find that it is very often because they don’t slow down – breathe – get some oxygen in their brains and pay attention. They don’t pay attention to their market, and they don’t pay attention to things that can help them to reach their market more effectively. They are often all mouth and no ears, and rushing too hard to get things right that they get it all wrong. That’s them, and I hope you will make the choice to not be one of them.

Honesty in Marketing: It’s Not All Evil!

Marketing is often viewed with a sizable dose of skepticism. If somebody will gain from it, there is a frequent perception that somebody also loses. It’s not true, but this skeptical belief often hurts people in their own marketing, based on how they view marketing as a whole. If I am introduced to something as a result of marketing, and I trade my money because I wanted it, did somebody automatically lose? I got the thing I wanted, and the company marketing to me got what they wanted.

Yes, there are a lot of dirty scoundrels who will lie to you about marketing, but in the big picture, dishonest companies just don’t make it very long. It reminds me of a principle I implemented to create one of my most successful business endeavors, and it was a single word. It came to me when I asked my wife and business partner to summarize what made us stand out from the crowd, and what made us better than the competition. She said “It’s easy, Mark. It all comes down to a single word … Integrity.” That moment will never leave me, and it has provided me a great amount of success.

Marketing Wisdom: It Only Appears Simple

Even today it feels strange and almost surreal to say that I’ve been in marketing for 25 years … but I have. I was raised into marketing, and I was sitting in boardrooms offering my opinions from the time I was a teenager. I started my first company when I was so young that my mother had to sign the legal papers … for years.

It took a long time to make good sense of it all, in business. In fact, I still utterly stink at some points in business, but the part I do understand is marketing. I know from many years of running successful (and some not so successful) businesses that marketing will make or break a company. They don’t make it easy to understand, either. Even in the best universities, they often talk about a lot of theories and concepts, but where the fork meets the food, it takes some stomach-churning hard work to see real success. I know, because I’ve done that, and if you ask me, or any of my peers who have earned anything more than six-digits per year, you will find very few of them who came by it with simplicity.

Stop buying into people’s notions that it is simple. If it was really so simple, it probably wouldn’t be very profitable.

TAM, SAM, SOM, ROI, SEO, SMM, and PECKERs

There are enough acronyms and industry buzz phrases to bring my lunch back to the top of my throat. Some of those acronyms really matter, such as TAM (Total Available Market), SAM (Served Available Market), SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market), ROI (Return On Investment), and many others. These matter in huge ways, but they are very frequently misunderstood or overlooked because of shortsightedness, which often comes from a frightened accountant who knows little about marketing or how the company actually gets the money to pay their salary.

In small businesses, it is often because, although the person in charge was good enough in their field to start a company, they were not good enough at business to understand that being good at a trade does not mean being good in business. Being good in business means knowing where your weaknesses are, and knowing how to fill those gaps with people who are as good or better at their field of knowledge than you. That’s right, the best business leaders learn to effectively delegate what is out of their league. It’s why I don’t handle my own bookkeeping, and why people in other trades are usually let down when they try their hand at marketing.

Other marketing acronyms are beaten to death, like SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing). These buzz phrases are so popular these days that dishonest people use them to fool companies. In online marketing, they talk about building more website links, but they throw out good ideas of why somebody would actually want to link to their website … and they often hold the absurd notion that more links is always a good thing. The really misinformed marketers will lead you to believe that social media marketing is all about networking and socializing.

This kind of shortsighted and misinformed thinking is why I created my very own acronym for 2012, and I welcome you to read why I’m very proud to call myself a “PECKER” (Profit Engineer and Competition Killer with Extraordinary Resources).

Advertising is Only a Very Small Part of Marketing

I find that a lot of people imagine marketing to mean advertising what they offer for sale. This is only a small part of what makes up marketing. Marketing addresses many other things, including a whole lot of math, creativity, strategy, and so much more. An easy example is to look at anything you have for sale, and answer the question of why you priced it at the level you have. Is it because of its cost to produce? Did you leave it up to the competition to decide your price? Did you ever actually do the research to know what it’s worth – and not just that – to the right audience? Did you get that research just right, or is it really so impossible that you made some costly mistakes by using guesswork instead of basing it on the right factors?

The ways that marketing influences a business are far too numerous to list in a single blog. I hope you’ll think about some of those things you may have overlooked. I welcome you to my blog archive to help get the wheels turning. There are hundreds of articles there, and I think you’ll find them very useful if you slow down.

Throw Out Your Sandwich and Make a New One

I hear a lot of people regurgitating the last thing they heard or read about marketing, and how fresh the latest idea is. I guess maybe it was fresh sometime before it hit a squillion blogs, but now it’s like a day-old tuna sandwich sitting out in the sun.

Great marketing is seldom a matter of seeking the latest and greatest thing. Following trends is important, but following them too closely that you follow the mistakes is often a train wreck in the making. The things that work are not just following what everybody else fervently exclaims will work. Great marketing requires research, testing, and discovering what works – really works – for your company, and being the one all of those trend-talkers are talking about. It is not about tweeting, Facebooking, Flabunctuating … or whatever the next big trend is.

I’ve written volumes about social media, including hundreds of thousands of words, and even a book. I marvel at how many people think it is something new. Did you think social media is new? It’s how I met my wife, well over a decade ago … and many close friends years before that. Social media helped me to grow several of my companies quite abundantly, too, but social media is not a unicorn net or a leprechaun trap.

One of its greatest uses is to listen and learn about what makes your market tick … and then use that information. Many people are too short-sighted to take things to a new level of analysis, and understand what to do with a good analysis. Most are unwilling or unable to dig deep into their creativity and find ways to make their brand stick out like a sexy model passing out free bacon sandwiches and all expense paid trips to “Available-Sexy-Model-and-Free-Bacon-Sandwichville”.

I witness many scared companies making scared decisions, but I’ve watched a lot more scared companies fail than I care to count … and that’s because they don’t count. The ones that count are the ones willing and fearless enough to do what it takes to be more like you want your company to be. Not like the bottle-rubbing, instant-enlightenment-seeking, one shot wonder at the competitor down the street – like you – or at least your vision of you. So stop being scared! Go out on a limb. That’s how people succeed in the real world of business.

Fear of Failure Destroys Marketing Efforts

I know the extreme power of fear. I have witnessed it throughout my career, and I’ve even allowed myself to be a casualty of fear at times. There is nothing easy about making the kind of commitment it requires to be successful. This goes for anything you really want in your life, whether it’s a spouse, a family, a new home, a new car, or an improved bottom line in your business. It takes a leap, but it doesn’t have to be simply on faith.

If you think about your marketing as a foundation of your company, which it really is, you will find yourself on a much stronger path. I know, it’s easy to try and argue the point. The accountants think accounting is the foundation, the attorneys think the legal structure makes the foundation, and the people who created the company think it’s all about the product or service … but that’s really not true.

Businesses simply do not work without being marketed. Even in the most obscure and complex examples you can throw out there, the biggest factor between success and failure of two equal companies really does come down to how well they are marketed.

I Believe You Could Do Better With Your Marketing

How could I put this any more clearly? You can do better! Failure to control your fear impulses and continuing to worry about what will not work is a fast track to failure. Try thinking more along the lines of what you stand to gain, instead of cowering to the fear of what you stand to lose. Then consider what you continue to lose effortlessly because you’re waiting. There is a steep cost of missed business opportunities. In fact, it is often the worst scenario of all. Getting out of your easy chair to face your fears is a huge factor in success, and I know it from experience.

I turned ideas into millions of dollars within only a short time after completing my 8th grade education. It didn’t take an MBA, or however you spell those fancy degrees hanging on the “smart guy’s” wall. It took research, creativity, and a good supplier of balls. I said balls, and you can call me a bad marketer for that … but if you want to know about selling balls – or selling anything else – read this article to get your thinking up and bouncing: “SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls”

Stop worrying about the cost of marketing done right, and start focusing on the positive outcome if you do. There are plenty of chickens out there, and I hope you aren’t one of them … and if you are, I hope you’ll make a commitment to change it.

Some Personal Lessons I Learned About Marketing

When I consider why I advocate for people to take their marketing more seriously and stop waiting for “something” to change, I look inward at how it has changed my life. I imagine the things that would never have happened without marketing, and I’ll give you a glimpse.

I dropped out of school at age 15 to start my first company. That could have gone quite miserably without good marketing.
I retired (the first time) at age 25. Without good marketing and having guts, that would have sucked for the average 15 year old dropout.
I met my wife in 2000 by using good marketing skills … online … with social media. Without that, I would not have the three wonderful kids I enjoy so much today.
I learned to competitively control automobiles at over 170 miles per hour (270+ KPH). It took a lot of marketing to own a race team. It is what I wanted, and because of good marketing, I made it happen.
I learned that making everybody happy is not required. Making the right ones happy is a whole lot more productive.
I learned that without climbing out on a limb and having the courage to embrace the immense value of marketing, I would have very few of the things that bring me joy and sustenance today.
I learned that sharing what I know feels very good, but even better when people will use it to improve their own lives.
I learned a whole lot more, but that’s why I have an archive, and that’s why this blog is not finished yet. Please subscribe if you want to keep learning with me.

I have no intention of explaining all that I have learned about marketing in a single blog article. That would be impossible. I hope that you will be willing to take a good look and accept some useful tips from a guy who has been around the block. I hope you will bookmark my blog archive and keep coming back to feed your brain with some useful marketing advice. I also hope you will subscribe for more to come soon. Don’t miss the point that it will make a lot more difference to your business than it will mine.

I also welcome you to get to know me. I’m a very approachable guy who loves the field of marketing, and I’m always delighted to be helpful.

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Marketing ROI Factor: Are You a Client or a Customer?

Planning is a Critical Marketing Component

I often ask people what they want to achieve in their business. Much of the time, they really don’t know. I ask questions relating to the sales volume of their industry, the volume they want to achieve, the market share increase they seek, and what they are doing, or willing to do to reach those things. It gets me a lot of blank stares and long pauses on phone lines. This is because they really don’t know.

Many companies don’t have goals, or even the right information to understand what goals are achievable at a given level of marketing effort. They don’t know what it will require to get the results they want, and many times they are entirely shut off to finding out the frightening truth of where they are and where they are headed. When this is the case, they simply do not have all the pieces of marketing math and science in place to make good decisions that will optimize their success.

Relax! If you don’t feel like reading right now, at least push the play button and listen to the audio version. I think you will gain something from this.

If you are a marketing professional of any decent calibur, you surely understand this, and deal with it all the time. You will appreciate this story, and wish for each of your customers to understand this. Otherwise, if you are a business person who is not involved in marketing, I will explain why you need to pay attention to your marketing people and stop trying to butt heads with them over things you don’t fully understand. If you don’t understand something, you should work with your marketing people to make things more understandable, and know this: Marketing professionals do a much better job when they are not getting roadblocked by you standing in your own way. They also perform much better if you are not having chest pains over every decision and over every nickel and dime. So, it is best that you pay attention and use what they know to your advantage. That is what they are there for!

The market information I mention here is not intuitive for most people. It is the data that a marketing director or consultant can deliver for you, digest for you, and provide continually updated measurement. Tragically, it is often overlooked when somebody chooses to kneecap the marketing department because they don’t understand the work we provide. It is important to have this information in order to build your strategy, or it will be much harder and usually impossible to achieve optimal results. If you overlook these fundamentals, you are building on a weakened foundation. It makes perfect sense, right? Fine, maybe not yet … so I’ll continue.

Without accurate information about market potential, a defined set of business objectives, and a clear knowledge of what it will take to meet your well-planned goals, a marketing campaign is often little more than an experiment in wasting money. Marketing should never be a “shot in the dark” like this, but I see it very often that this is the way companies, large and small, approach their market. It leaves little wonder why some companies view marketing as a risk, while others understand the sound investment it really is. When this miserable fate of marketing fear gains control, companies suffer in huge ways. The common cause is lack of research and planning. The common outcome is that somebody makes an executive decision to slow down the marketing train and pull it off the tracks.

When Return on Investment Goes Negative

Positive return on investment (ROI), is the magical part of marketing that keeps a business steaming forward. Sometimes companies accidentally stumble on a positive return on investment. After all, even a broken clock is right twice per day. When the return on investment comes without good planning, it is often just out of “luck”, and that “luck” runs out. When it is based on yesterday’s market information and yesterday’s strategy, a similar drop in ROI can be expected.

If you have encountered this in your company, let’s look at this again and reevaluate the importance of marketing. Marketing is what makes companies successful. Without good marketing, many phenomenally great companies have failed. Conversely, many presumed failures have become successful because of good marketing. There is a strong correlation in the outcome of a company and the quality of their marketing. Not just quantity of their marketing … I said quality. This requires providing your marketing people the resources they need so they can deliver what the company needs.

Marketing provides the math that runs the machine, and has a huge influence in everything from determining the right selling price of goods or services, to the CEO’s salary. It is a lot more than just advertising, branding, or updating your Facebook status. When marketing is done right, it is approached as a holistic strategy to make the company stronger and more profitable.

Notable Considerations: Starbucks was a little coffee company and Subway was a little sandwich shop in the beginning. Because they understood the principles I am expressing here, they have become some of the most successful companies in their fields.

Call for Marketing: A True Story

I received a telephone call from an existing client. Actually, he is more like a customer, because he thinks like a customer and creates his own roadblocks like a customer, which is unlike a client. I consider customers and clients two entirely different things.

Let me explain this: In my business, clients view me as an integral partner in their success, and not just a person who completes a series of tasks. They understand that my knowledge and experience is what brings them success, and not just my performance of a set of prescribed deeds. They pay attention, and they take my advice very seriously. Clients don’t tell me what to do about their marketing … they ask me what to do about their marketing.

To be a client, a person cannot nickel and dime their way through and stumble along an undefined path until they make it. We set goals together based on solid facts and market data, and we adjust them as needed. We create a finely polished plan and we work together to make that plan a success.

So, about the person who called me, I like this guy. He has been a customer for about four years, and we have built a relationship in that time. I consider him my friend. He has been to my home, and he has met my family. We are not strangers, and we have a mutual trust. If he says a check is in the mail, I trust him (unlike this example from Suture Express). I believe that he trusts me, too, but he gets in his own way. He likes to be in control, and he likes to prescribe specific marketing tasks. That is fine, because if he has less than optimal results, it is ultimately not my fault. On the other hand, it kind of makes me feel a bit dirty and icky to just do what he says when I know he is making a mistake.

The troubling part is that when I explain why he should be doing something differently, the train gets derailed. It is not really because he does not have faith in me. As I said, he has been to my home, and he has witnessed first-hand that I am more than just a little bit successful in my field. What I have determined is that he has a hard time putting faith in his own plan … because he doesn’t really have a plan. He just knows he wants to make more money, but he refuses to take a strategic approach, regardless how sincerely or logically I urge him to do so.

In our recent discussions, he has explained that he wishes to market a product that he believes in very much. The product is in one of the most competitive industries in the world, and includes a line of very exclusive products with a specific market that is typically affluent. I asked him the common questions, and he does not yet have all the answers. What he could tell me is that he wants to hit the market at full strength. In his own words, he wants to put 100 percent into the marketing effort. When I told him that he had better prepare to mortgage his oceanfront home, his boat, and his first-born son, he probably thought I was joking.

Let me insert a bit of fact so that you can really understand this. My customer recently experienced a common fate as his employer of 20 years sold off his division to an overseas company and he became jobless. Because of his age and his specialized experience, he decided to avoid the underwhelming job market and take a new focus. He has chosen to sell a line of products that he and his wife’s other company has had some success with.

My friend and customer is an accountant by trade. In fact, he is a damn good one, who has been charged with accounting for a whole lot of millions of dollars by a sizable corporation. He has his Master’s degree in accounting and I believe he has done a great job with it. He is not a marketing professional.

His idea of putting “100 percent” into the new business venture was still expected to be manageable with a budget of under $10,000. Ten thousand dollars?! Can you even imagine that? His goal is to replace his full-time income of a senior accountant of 20 years with an investment of less than a month’s income. If that level of investment success was possible, don’t you think McDonald’s, Wal Mart, Microsoft, and Google would have already cornered that market?

So, in order to try and keep his perception of risk low, I introduced the idea of a partnership of sorts, whereby I would provide marketing on a contingency basis. I would not have done that if I didn’t have a degree of faith in his idea, and trust for him as a businessman. I also normally do not provide such a service with woefully under-capitalized companies, or those which are unwilling to listen and take good advice from an experienced consultant.

What I realized, as I considered this a little closer is that such a partnership is really not a good idea for me, simply because of his unwillingness to understand the importance of marketing. After all, the emphasis of his new company is nearly entirely based on marketing. Instead, I will offer him the opportunity to prescribe a set of tasks, pay me as a customer, and tell me how he wants to handle his marketing.

The way it turns out, he mostly believes that the emphasis will be in the production of a really great website and some social media exposure, but gives little thought of what else it takes, and what else I know. He wants me to produce his ecommerce website development, initial search engine optimization efforts, and set up a social media presence. The four-digit budget will be exhausted long before I can complete these tasks at an optimal level, but since he is a great guy and existing customer, I will stretch my work out beyond his spending cap. I will do a an exceptional job for him, and I will not let him down.

My customer’s chosen direction will leave no room for strategy development, data acquisition, customer modeling, industry market research and forecasting, or the many other things which need to be done to create a successful market penetration. However, it will provide a sense of control and security for my customer. He will fall far short of what he could achieve if he actually could bring himself to put forth a 10 percent effort, but I cannot tell somebody how to run their business. My job is to tell them how they could run their business, what they could achieve, and help direct them there. As for the 100 percent effort he talked about … he has no concept of what a 100 percent effort looks like in a competitive market. He has only seen that in movies.

Summary: You Cannot Save Your Way to Prosperity

If you approach your market like the customer I have described, you will miss a lot of potential. In fact, it is a good recipe for failure. A reality of marketing that is difficult for many people to grasp is that you cannot save enough money to become prosperous in business. To become prosperous, you have to invest it, and do so with good direction and dedication.

I like the way Thomas Jefferson put it with the inspiring quote as follows:

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”

–Thomas Jefferson

Don’t just take it from me, look at your own company. If you are investing wisely in your business, you know that I am right. On the other hand, if you are trying to save money in order to keep your cost low, your profit is undoubtedly much lower than it could be, too.

I shared my description of what I call a client versus a customer. The question that I really hope you can answer for yourself is which makes more sense in your business. Would you rather be a client or a customer?

Other Related Articles: I believe that a lot of shortsightedness comes from fear of loss overcoming hope for gain. The fear of loss is often due to the cost of doing things right, versus just doing things. Here are some related articles you will appreciate if you liked this topic.

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Social Media ROI, Marketing Cost, and the Willingly Confused

Social Media Sends Mixed Signals

Many people have a very confused view of social media, and I can understand why. If you just look at all the ways social media is used, there should be little wonder how people confuse the issues. Some of the most bewildering concerns I notice surrounding social media are the return on investment (ROI) and the cost of social media marketing.

Millions of the world’s businesses understand by now that an investment in social media is vital to their success. Tragically, many of the same businesses are generally clueless about how and why they spend money with social media, and how to optimize their spending for the best results.

These same confused companies are further complicated by misguided notions that social media is limited to, or primarily intended only for personal socializing. They are the companies who question why a business would use Twitter, because that is where people announce what they had for lunch, LinkedIn is just for job-hunters, and Facebook is where old high school friends swap stories. That is social networking, and networking is important, but it is only one facet of social media. If you confuse this, and think that social networking is the basis for social media marketing, you will waste a huge amount of energy trying to sell to your friends, and others who already know you.

Believing that social media is just for personal socializing is a costly absurdity. It is the kind of absurdity that some companies will only discover after competitors have stolen away enough market share to demand attention.

Because of a lot of confusion, some people will say that the return on investment (ROI) of social media marketing is difficult or impossible to accurately calculate. I don’t think that is the case at all. If you have the right variables, calculating the ROI of social media becomes just another mathematical equation. The trouble is that so many people neglect or overlook the measurable data that really counts.

Social Media ROI Causes for Confusion

A first step to calculating the ROI of a social media campaign is to have a clearly defined campaign. That means having a strategy in place, and not just a list of tactics. It means producing a plan with a set of measurable outcomes. It requires creating and collecting customer modeling data, and using that data to reach your target audience.

Read the Social Media Signals

I have read and participated in a lot of conflicting discussions and possible answers about social media ROI, and most of it is very inaccurate or misleading. Many people will intentionally leave it open for a lot of confusion. After all, if people are confused, it is a lot easier to charge them money for things that are of little or no benefit. Calculating the ROI of social media is actually very basic, but that’s not what the failed real estate agent turned instant marketer wants you to believe. If they can convince you to just wait a little longer to see measurable results, they get paid more. Because of ignorance and greed, the debate of return on investment may never end.

In order to try and bring a little more clarity, let’s address two huge variables.

Social Media Branding vs. Increased Sales

Two very popular considerations for growing a business using social media are branding and increased sales. The two should work well together, but let’s face it, a brand can be really popular and still have a bigger drain hole than spigot. Even the most brilliant branding does not always make the sales hose filling your bucket as fast and powerful as the money drain leaving your bucket. There has to be a balance in order for the efforts to be sustainable and valuable to the company.

I find it very common for companies to lean too far in one direction or the other in their goals and attempts for successfully reaching their market. Confusing the value and cost of branding with the value and cost of increased sales is often when measuring social media ROI becomes completely muddled. Producing a balanced strategy is simply not as intuitive as most companies expect.

Building your brand name is extremely important. It builds recognition, trust, and sets your tone among the many other competing brands. It does not always have a proportionate result in sales. If you doubt it, look at it like this: You have probably encountered many great brands via social media, while it still didn’t bring you closer to buying from them.

In many instances, building your brand recognition will seem like it takes on a life of its own. When it gets to a certain point, it will grow and change, even without your input. People will talk about you more, and they will pass along your virtues by way of social media. They share your brand on Facebook, tweet about your brand, and they will become an influence to your brand (if you are paying attention).

Now, what about building those social-media-induced sales? All of the touchy-feely great branding and kind words about you can still lack a good reason to buy from you. There are a lot of companies I really like, but I am simply not their target audience. When I know somebody who can benefit from those brands, I pass them along. The brand reaches their target through me, and others like me, who become their connectors to their ideal target audience.

This is a fantastic outcome, but let’s face it, it is not always as efficient or as easy to come by as you may wish. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot of brilliance to produce a sustainable and self-propagating level of branding. It is a highly effective strategy for long-term growth, but it is also a very ambitious and frightening marketing endeavor in the beginning. Thus, a need for a balance between short-term and long-term marketing strategy.

Social Media Marketing is Branding, Advertising, and Much More!

I believe that some of the worst points of confusion in social media marketing come back to what marketing is, or is not. Both branding (long-term) and advertising (short-term and long-term) are extremely valuable when they are done well, but they require very different measurements to accurately calculate their respective ROI.

Which Way is the Right Way?

Companies often skip steps in their marketing, and then wonder why it is not measurable. This is especially common in smaller companies, because it is nobody’s full-time job to understand, monitor, and measure the company’s successes in this area. Instead, a lot of companies will try and “wing it” by assigning marketing tasks as an add-on to other job descriptions.

This is most profound as it applies to social media, but often because the people actually writing the checks have never had somebody explain the value and potential of social media from a marketing perspective. So they often just pin a badge of “Marketing Expert” on an unsuspecting employee who seems to have some aptitude (has a Facebook account).

When you decide how to set your prices for something, it is marketing. When you perform a market feasibility study, it is marketing. When you accumulate customer modeling data and use that information to better understand what people want and need from your company, it is marketing. When you set up a new Facebook or Twitter account and cross your fingers and hope for amazing business results, that is not marketing. That is dreaming. Dreaming is not measurable, and only seldom is it profitable.

Aside From Being Social, Why Should People Buy From You?

Without an expressed reason for people to become your customer, efforts will generally fall into the category of branding. This includes when they are right there on your blog, where you want them to be. As an example, I use my blogs and social networks for reaching out to be helpful, and that emphasizes my branding. When I say “I take coffee and cigarettes and turn them into better SEO and social media marketing.” … that is my brand. All of that helpfulness and broad recognition in my industry is great. It leads to many opportunities, but it is not what actually makes the sale.

On the other hand, when I say “Call me to find out how I can help you to grow your business with a measurable return on investment” … that is advertising, and that is also marketing, but it is not branding. It is how I earn a living, and it is what improves my social media ROI. The branding is just what makes more people comfortable to call, and confident when they write me the check.

As you can imagine, when it comes to spreading a word far and wide, branding statements and being useful to others will often reach further and faster. This is because they are generally non-threatening to anybody. While, although this information is good food for thought and useful to many, I have already diminished much of its social media reach by making an advertorial statement (above).

Regardless how useful what I wrote here is, many people will be far less likely to share it with others. Part of that is due to cynicism, and part of it is due to competition. It takes a lot of branding to make up for and repair cynicism and people’s disinterest and distrust toward advertorials, even within a useful context. This is why I say that a balance is very important.

If you do not understand and differentiate the value measurements of branding and the value measurements of other areas of your marketing, calculating your return on investment will always be a bit cloudy and confusing.

Am I wrong? Go ahead and tell me why and we will hash it out until one of us agrees. 😉

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Photo Credits:
Confused Traffic Signal by caesararum via Flickr
Confusing Signals by Luis Argerich via Flickr
Confusing Signage by Tara Hunt via Flickr

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Crazy Things People Search For

People search for the craziest things online. Looking at your website statistics to see the searches people use to find your website can be an eye-opener. I discover thousands of bizarre and unexpected searches which lead people to my websites, and some of them quite useful. This can be quite entertaining, and also very beneficial for understanding people and the ways they search.

I constantly hear from people begging to be at the top of search engine results for specific terms. I often find that the things they want to rank for are about as well researched and thought out as balancing a three ton hippopotamus on a popsicle stick above your grandmother’s fine China collection. There are two problems with this: 1.) Somebody is going to get hurt. 2.) It does not work well, mathematically.

Most website owners do not have a clue about how to select the search terms to target, or even what people are already using to find their website. Even fewer know how to target useful search terms, or anything at all about the enormous value of lateral keywords which can often account for far more website traffic than the terms they desire. This is to your advantage, because now you do have a clue. You can thank me with your comments.

Reviewing the actual terms people type into a search engine to find things is truly astonishing. It is also an important way to better understand people and what they want. If you do not use tools like Google Analytics or Clicky statistics, you should.

The topic of how people search the Internet came up in conversation with a client yesterday. He pointed out a competing website which was ranking higher in search engines than his website. Of course, it was for his “hippopotamus-balancing” keyword selection which he thought must be important, because everybody else was targeting it. He got a quick schooling when I pointed out how few people were actually searching for that keyword phrase, and that according to available measurements (Compete.com, Alexa.com, Quantcast.com, Open Site Explorer and others) his website receives over 1,000 times more visitors and incoming links, and is ranked well for thousands of search terms. He kind of shut up after I showed him that, and I had my mind’s-eye vision of doing a victory dance. Then I pointed out his high conversion rate and had to take a step backward to preserve my personal space before he could slap on a big man-hug or kiss me square on the lips for all the money he is making.

Strange Ways People Search the Internet

It is easy to assume what people are searching for. It is also a huge point of failure for the majority of businesses trying to promote their product or service. I find too many people who make assumptions of the keyword phrases people will use to find them. It is important to be aware that each and every one of us use search engines differently. I find whole industries every day which blow me away with their total failure to understand and reach their market.

In an effort to make this point, I offer you these little bits of reality:

Here is a blog article I wrote a while back about cigars. I do not sell cigars, (although perhaps I should). I wrote one article about a cigar company falling short in their marketing, and then I later followed up with an article which showed the top 200 cigar-related search terms which brought people to my website from that single blog post. See “Cigar Prices Rising With Bad SEO and Social Media Marketing“.

More proof of this matter of an industry which did not grasp search engine optimization was found in the Smart Slate interactive whiteboard slate. See “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Because of the absurdity of this industry, I have earnestly looked into the option of entering the market just to mop the floor with the blood of fallen competitors.

Then, there is the automotive industry. I want to scream at this whole industry for the way they suck up billions in government bailouts, yet they keep trying to do business the way their grandfather sold cars. I wrote about their infamous ways of marketing and just how badly they are missing the mark. See “Topeka Kansas Car Dealer Social Media Marketing Case Study”

These examples are just a few of many thousands of markets being terribly overlooked by good marketing efforts including SEO that works. If you do not know what people are looking for, you will have a really hard time delivering what they want. It should seem obvious that when some knucklehead SEO (search engine optimizer) like me can come into an industry and take over thousands of first-page spots for search phrases and pull in the eyes of their potential customers, somebody is really missing the boat.

I suggest examining the search phrases people are already using to find your website, and reading this article on how to “Improve SEO Return on Investment (ROI) With Simple Math“.

If you don’t pay attention to what people are searching for, in reality rather than just myth, you may as well just play with a hippopotamus on a stick. Just don’t blame me if you break grandma’s China.

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Improve SEO Return on Investment (ROI) With Simple Math

I share a lot of information about marketing topics and SEO (search engine optimization), but I realize that many people still wonder if SEO is real or just make believe. I have a pretty good idea of why this is the case, and I will share that with you. It is usually due to a history of low return on investment (ROI) for their SEO efforts, or a fear of low ROI for future SEO efforts. This pretty well covers it in basic terms.

Let’s face it, if you knew that you could hand a dollar to the search engine optimizer and they would hand you three dollars back, you would go to great lengths to get your hands on more dollars … to hand over to the SEO. So, what in this world would ever hold you back from that? I will venture an experienced guess. It is mostly a concern of whether you can actually see a return on investment, right? You want to know there is profit in the future, before you spend money on something you may or may not fully understand.

I am going to give you some simple math to help you understand and improve ROI of SEO in your business. I will also provide tools to help you measure your market potential. I hope that you will pay attention and use this to your benefit.

A big step to achieving this good math I speak of is to use mathematical logic in your marketing and stop fussing about low budgets, drained bank accounts, or anything else outside of these more important numbers of how to grow your profit. You see, this math will be lost on deaf ears unless you can overcome your own obstacles surrounding effective marketing. If it is mathematically sound, and a better answer for your business, it is your job to do what it takes to achieve better results.

The first thing to understand will be the potential value of SEO to your business, and then realize that SEO is extremely measurable. Thus it carries a very low risk when it is done well, and done completely.

How Much Potential Business is There For You Online?

If you are not yet aware of your market potential, we must get past this part. Do you have something worth marketing? I wrote an article on this not so long ago titled “Things You Cannot Sell Online“, but the list is pretty small. My wife even sells wedding cakes online … and lots of them! She does not take the orders online, but because of her online presence, she is busy enough to turn away customers every day.

If you are not clear on how much business is available to you, try using a tool like SpyFu, WordTracker, or Google’s keyword tool to find out how many people are searching for what you offer. Once you have some idea of the potential, which is likely more than you would expect, and even more than you will discover in just a few minutes of effort, it is time to turn it into an increase in your business.

Turning Market Potential Into Real SEO Numbers

Using basic figures, let’s consider this: If your average customer is worth an extra $50 to your business and you know that one in every 1,000 exposures to your business will bring you a new customer, you can see how 100,000 exposures to your business will be worth $5,000. This is easy so far, right?

Now, what if you could relatively easily raise some of these numbers? Which will you raise first? Maybe a better marketing message could reduce that one in 1,000 exposures to one in 700 that becomes a customer. That same number of visitors would be worth over $7,100.

What if there was an even easier way to improve your ROI? What if you had better market segmentation and a more targeted audience searching for exactly what you offer? Then, it may mean you earn a customer’s business once in every 500, 250 or even fewer exposures. That could add up pretty big.

Now, let’s consider increasing volume. What if you could realistically multiply your traffic just by moving up one or two positions in search results? Do you think that is impossible, improbable, or just doesn’t happen to people like you? Well, let me comfort you a bit by saying that it is clearly definable in the math, and it is quite achievable, too. Somebody will be there at the top of every search, and it is not just by luck.

It is true that where you are listed in search engine results for any given user’s search will have a huge impact on your reach and your ROI. Just how much does your search engine position relate to exposure to your brand? Allow me to explain it with math.

Using Simple Math to Improve SEO ROI

Let’s consider some very reliable numbers to help you increase your SEO return on investment. These are not sketchy make-believe numbers. These are numbers which are widely accepted and observed across the industry.

First, second, and third positions returned for a search receive over 50 percent of users’ clicks.
First page search positions receive over 90 percent of users’ clicks.

Now think about this: It means that if you are in the top three search results, you can expect that over half of the people visiting a website when performing the particular search will land on your website. On the other hand, if you are on the second page, you can expect a website visit from only a minuscule number of people searching for the given term. The way the math works out, if you are number seven and there are 10,000 monthly clicks to websites from searches for a given phrase, you can expect 2-3 percent of the search users to visit your website on average. That means 200-300 visitors for that search phrase each month, whereas the top of the list can expect over 5,000 by being just six spots above you. Now try plugging that math into the examples I gave earlier about value per customer, reaching a better audience, and the potential profit.

It really is true that you can have many times the number of people looking at your website and checking out your offerings, simply by moving your search engine rank upward. Sometimes, it is just a small move that keeps you away from success, but do you know which terms you are almost successful with? I hope this is some pretty serious thought for you, because you may actually be on the edge of success, but you do not know it or know what to do with it.

If you are concerned about the ROI of search engine optimization, the first place to look should be whether you are almost there already, but only doing it part-way and ending up somewhere down the list. If you budget and plan for top 20 ranking instead of top three ranking, you will often waste money and risk wanting to slash your wrists sometime down the road. On the other hand, if you plan and budget for top three ranking, you will shoot coffee from your nose while laughing on the morning you walk into your office and see all the new business coming in.

Reducing the Competition Can Raise Your ROI

Another place to look for better SEO ROI is in the pieces your competition left behind. If you are only focused on highly competitive keyword phrases but only making it to the second or third page of search engine results, you are likely thumbing your nose at a lot of money. Two reliable solutions are to do more of what it takes to reach the top, and also refocus some of your effort toward lateral keywords which are more achievable and can be snatched up by the thousands. Yes, by the thousands!

For example, searches for terms like “lateral keywords“, “SEO meta tags“, or “how to sell SEO” (which, by the way, has a lot to do with being able to do it well) will show my articles in the top of search engine results. Although these items receive a lower volume of searches than other keyword phrases, they are valuable because there are thousands of phrases like these where users find my websites … and your websites, if you choose to embrace your lateral keywords.

Less competitive lateral search terms are often very specific to the users’ search, which means they are more precisely getting what they want. It is a winning solution which can often dramatically increase the ROI of SEO. Oh, and I want to repeat that there are thousands of these potential search terms just ready for you to sweep in and rank at the top.

ROI Requires Investment

Yes, return on investment requires investment. Are you surprised?

I see it every day how a potential client will flinch at the cost of good SEO. In fact, depending on how serious they are about increasing their business, I am lucky that some of them don’t stroke out and lie dead before me. I would really hate to administer CPR to somebody before the check is written, but I have come close a few times. So to minimize the risk, I try to have some good numbers to explain the process and benefits of SEO done well.

If you do not have an investment, you surely cannot expect a return on investment (ROI). This is pretty simple to understand. I realize how scary an investment can be. It is especially scary when it is something that you do not fully understand. I hope this has given you some thought on how you approach your search engine optimization efforts and how to increase the ROI with some very basic math.

Now after all this math, can you believe there are actually trained and experienced SEO for hire who can do all this for you and minimize your loss of ROI? It is a crazy thought for some, but you want to increase your SEO ROI, and I am sure you will try to use this information wisely.

Here are two more articles you may appreciate that discuss marketing cost:

Please be sure to add your comments.

*Photo Credit to Acid Wash Photography via Flickr

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